Wednesday, November 11, 2009

If you have not yet tried Wolfram Alpha yet, then you don't really know the power of the internet. According to its own desctiption it is not a search engine, it is a computational knowledge engine. It sends back an answer rather than links. If I type in two stocks it will return a chart comparing market cap to shares outstanding. If I type in third cousin's great grandson it will return a family tree of that relationship... Earthquakes in Italy... a map with dots that I can deliniate a date or historical period.

Saturday, November 7, 2009

This is a cool website and the science room may have a lot of potential for the layered curriculum lab setting. Teach yourself chemisty through lab experiences. However the mantra of the site " all Lab no Lecture" does not hold true, I had to read a lot of background info to get to the acid base lab. Useful to find labs organized by topic.

Discussion on Science education and the future of Science Literacy in America. Take a listen to this pod cast.

Nobel Laureate Dr. Carl Wieman directs the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative at the University of British Columbia and the Colorado Science Education Initiative.

(Sep 22, 2008 at Cornell University)

Wieman emphasizes the importance of making science education effective and relevant for a large and diverse population. The approach, he says, is to transform how students understand and use science, and this calls for teaching them to actually think like scientists.

Friday, November 6, 2009

Science Nation Online Magazine
Science Nation
is an online magazine that each week looks at discoveries and researchers that will change our lives: an artificial retina that can help the blind to see, new materials for building things stronger and lighter, what we're learning from organisms in hot volcanic vents, and ice core secrets that could reveal answers to global warming. (National Science Foundation)

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Video Download Helper for Mozilla Firefox. Useful tool to have copy of YouTube videos when internet access is slow or unavailable. As teachers we always need a contingency plan in case our lesson plans do not work out.

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Layered Curriculum Day here in Chemistry class. Four Lab stations, four different labs going on, all kids engaged in science. One pair working on determining which of 5 different ionic compounds are exothermic or endothermic, another is determining the heat of fusion of candle wax. A different group is calculating the number calories consumed by an alcohol burner and a third is prepping a lab for next class by melting mass quantities of wax in a water bath and weighing out equal test tube fulls of the stuff.I am starting them to clean up and have no grading to take home. Sounds good to me.

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Starting to Make Blob for my classes, I mean like THE BLOB from the horror movie.Should be quite the in class demo.ANY How.Summer school starts tomorrow for preparation.I intend to work on making my lessons into a layered curriculum. I had much successwith a unit on stoichiometry during the spring 09 and would like to repeat the processfor other units.I enjoy the one on one assessments and focus on learning not on completion.Students work at their own pace and once my prep has been done ahead of time, I can focuson student learning too.